Dodgers Sign Yasiel Puig

The Dodgers have a history of signing and developing impact players from Latin America, but their once-impressive methods of acquiring talent faded under the ownership of Frank McCourt. Now they're back at it.

The Dodgers announced today that they have signed 21-year-old outfielder Yasiel Puig to a seven-year Major League contract. The contract, which is worth $42MM, reflects renewed commitment to success in Latin America, GM Ned Colletti says.

"This signing shows ownership’s commitment to re-engage in the region and dedicate ourselves to getting stronger in this area,” Colletti said. “We feel that Puig can be an outstanding Major League player for the organization.”

Puig can void his contract and go to arbitration once he accumulates three years of MLB service, Dylan Hernandez of the LA Times reports (Twitterlinks). The Dodgers don't appear to have been the high bidder, Jon Heyman of CBSSports.com tweets. They never saw Puig play in a game, Danny Knobler of CBSSports.com tweets.

The Dodgers, now under the ownership of Guggenheim Sports Management, had publicly stated their intention to bid aggressively on the best available Latin American players. Puig, a 6'3" outfielder from Cuba, fits the description. He agrees to terms two days after being granted free agency and four days before baseball's collective bargaining agreement imposes spending restrictions on teams. Starting July 2, teams will work with a $2.9MM annual budget for international prospects.

Agent Jaime Torres represents Puig, who appears to be in line for a record contract. The outfielder has two seasons of experience in Cuba’s Serie Nacional. He’s more polished than Jorge Soler of the Cubs but less seasoned than Yoenis Cespedes of the Athletics, according to Sanchez. The Cubs and White Sox both appear to have expressed interest in signing Puig.

Reports on Puig have been modest, Ben Badler of Baseball America reported this week. Teams are working off of limited information, as most scouts haven't seen much of the prospect since last summer.

I don’t know that he actually has a higher floor (both of them essentially have a floor of flaming out and being a career minor leaguer), but he’s closer to ‘ready’ so he’s more likely to reach his ceiling.

“He’s not” as in “he’s not supposed to be.” But you knew that already. I clearly haven’t seen either of them play, but according to scouts who have he’s not supposed to be as good. But you probably already knew that too.

WOW! That’s a lot of money!
You have heard of the Paining “The Silent Scream”. Well I am willing to bet there was a silent “Groan” amongst all Dodger minor league outfielders, it just got that much tougher to make the “Bigs”.

If I am the Orioles, I would gladly take Tyler Henson back! He’s stuck in a log jam now with the Puig signing.

I guess I can understand that argument but I still don’t think that Puig has any real connection to Hamels. If the point is that the Dodgers have proven they will spend big I’m fairly certain we already knew that irregardless of this signing. There are a few big market clubs that can and will spend big big money in free agency. I would count the Dodgers among them and bankruptcy/sale of the team not withstanding we all knew that already. Nice to see the kid make some money before the new rules take effect but Hamels is going to make a ton of money anyway based off of his past performance in MLB.

Everyone seems to be missing this point. Under McCourt, they would have been brushed off as pseudo-contenders for whoever this guy may be. It’s a good sign that new ownership is willing to pay. At this rate, they might be willing to even pass the luxury tax.

I’ve heard the Cuban league described as around AA level competition. Considering American college ball is around A level, I find it hard to believe that a league stocked full of players coming up through a regimented and rigorous State athletic program wouldn’t be able to match amateur college ball.

6 mil a year for the best remaining international player isn’t really an overpay imho, especially for someone who is closer to ready than Soler (by all reports) if not quite as ready as Cespedes. Keep in mind the Dodgers’ org is starved for more outfield talent; their best outfielders in the system as far as ceiling goes are arguably all in A ball (Garcia, Pederson and Baldwin) so they really needed this guy, too. He sounds like a real talent with some rawness in his swing that hopefully they will fix up within a couple of years. He’s also considered to be extremely fast, and an above average fielder. I really feel this was a signing they needed to do and given all the above can’t really be looked at as an overpay.

Yeah agreed. Now, hearing reports that he could be ready to contribute this year, I don’t quite buy those, I think he still needs work and those reports could be coming from his agent for all we know, but it does sound like next year is very possible, which is already critical plus for the Dodgers, who could then maybe focus remaining FA money on another position of need (infield). Have to see how he looks to start though of course; may start in Hi-A and then AA soon after or to start next season.

I was referring to Baseball America/Baseball Prospectus/ and Keith Law, but if they don’t have legit scouts I guess we shouldn’t ever use them for any scouting reports. If they are so bad I guess we just shouldn’t use them. LA even has said that they have never seen him play once, hard to scout on that!

Yeah I was just saying that a lot of scouts aren’t as high on him as the Dodgers reps are. Were you referring to White seeing him in a workout in Mexico? Just wondering since they claim to have never seen him in game.

I disagree about him not being very athletic. That’s not what I’m hearing and not seeing that on the tape I’ve watched at all. He’s also the fastest (in time) of the three major Cuban signee. Agree that he’s not an immediate major leaguer though, probably 1-2 years away.

To everyone comparing this to Soler, you have to realize Soler is a greater risk. Puig is more of a sure thing and not near as raw. You also have to remember Soler can elect to go to arbitration. So if he develops like many think, he will end up with more money than Puig.

What is false? If you’re going to say I’m wrong, at least provide a reason why. Cespedes hadn’t played in nearly a year either. That didn’t seem to hurt his stock much.

The difference in guaranteed money is because Puig is much more projectable than Soler. Soler has a higher upside because of his tools, its just so hard to project what he will be because he is so raw. So Soler got less guaranteed money but has the potential to make more via arbitration if he lives up to the hype.

I think this is a good signing for the dodgers. They could you really use the help right now, even though he might not play this year it a good sign of things to come. Who knows, if he performs well in the minors he may get called up. Im just hoping we can get an upgrade offensively soon that can play this year.

All of a sudden everyone claims to be an expert on international players they know zilch about by regurgitating the same two points over and over again.

“More polished/less upside than Soler but not as polished as Cespedes.”

That is so completely laughable. Puig is 21 (allegedly anyways)…how can you possibly make such assertions about his ceiling. Players improve at different rates and in different ways. Scouts see things in players that never come to fruition and miss things in players that end up materializing into greatness.

Signing any international player is a gamble, but I don’t think an AAV of 6 mil should be generating this much scrutiny.

Right, what do we even have scouts for? I mean it’s not like they’re right even most of the time, and since clubs obviously don’t use them to evaluate players it’s silly for people on message boards to believe anything they say.

scouts definitely aren’t right most of the time. It’s why the baseball draft has like a million rounds. So many people play it at a level close to the highest that players slip through cracks, and scouts miss things all the time.

If a player is considered good succeeding 3 out of 10 times in terms of getting a hit, then I would say amateur scouts are probably considered successful if they hit on 1 or 2 out of 15 guys. The rate of attrition in terms of baseball prospects is astronomical, it’s the hardest sport to project amateur to professional. Look at the number of first round picks who can’t even hack AA every year.

The draft is so long because there are so many guys eligible to be drafted, and with the attrition rate in baseball teams need those players to replace people. If a scout was only right once or twice out of every 15 guys he scouted he would be fired; maybe 1 or 2 out of 15 they hit on a gem, but they better have a pretty good idea of a guys skills at least 10 of those 15 times or they aren’t going to have a job.

I think that misconception comes from people misunderstanding the term “ceiling.” Ceiling doesn’t mean “what the player should become,” ceiling is what the player could become if everything goes absolutely perfectly and they guy reaches his perfect world potential, which happens about 1% of the time. A scout looks at a guy’s overall tools, and what his body type is (how much he can fill out) and how that generally affects guys’ tools, and says “if absolutely everything goes perfectly he could become this.” Plenty of things can go wrong between high school/college and the majors (injuries, lack of effort, lack of conditioning, mechanical issues, a guy simply not being able to get everything out of his tools [JD Drew anyone?]), but that doesn’t mean scouts were wrong about a guys ceiling, it just means he didn’t reach his ceiling (which happens almost every time) and there are varying degrees of not reaching your ceiling (from not being as good of a major leaguer as you could have been, to not being a major leaguer at all).

According to the statistics I’ve seen on the Internet, only 8 to 10% of minor league players make it to the majors. That would be a 90 to 92% failure rate for scouts. I read another story that stated out of 3500 minor league players, only 280 made it to the major leagues.

That can’t be pinned on scouts though, by the time those guys “should” have made it to the majors there have been dozen of people involved in their development, and just because a scout likes a guy’s tool or says he has a high ceiling doesn’t mean he’s guaranteeing him to make it to the majors, some guys have more inherent risk than others.

A scout “failing” would be if a kid wasn’t what the scout said he was to begin with, not whether the player development department can make a major leaguer out of him.

Yeah there a lot of minor league players whos scouting reports say that they don’t have the skills to be a major leaguer, a lot of guys are career minor leaguers and their careers don’t last very long. As long as a scout doesn’t project him for something he isn’t going to be then he’s done his job.

Yeah, and it’s not even like you can say that if a scout says a guy has a ceiling of a #3 starter and he ends up a reliever that the scout has “failed.” A ceiling is just that, that is a perfect world scenario, and the likelihood of him actually reaching the ceiling is really low.

exactly. Some guys don’t have any tools, nothing projectable, but can play the game and flourish. Dustin Pedroia come to mind.

If you can hit the ball over the wall and into the gap, does it matter how pretty your swing is or how low/high your leg kick is?

And what’s worse, is people read some innocuous quote by some unnamed scouts quote to fill out a story on a blog (not blaming the writers, that’s your job), and take it as gospel and proceed to repeat it ad nauseum to whoever will listen. It will usually be presented in some kind of manner that makes the person look more important and educated. Something like: “Based on all the scouting reports I’ve read and the game film I’ve seen on this guy, I come to the conclusion that his upside is limited and he has a hitch in his swing that will prevent him from being able to turn on the inside fastball at the highest level”.

It’s like, no dude, you read one story on MLBTR where the writer pulled some quote from anonymous scout who probably watches 100s of amateurs play every week and never focused in specifically on this kid.

People are overlooking the arbitration clause in both soler’s and pug’s contracts.In fact, if soler produces his contract will amount than more than puig’s. To clear things up, Puig has higher upside than Cespedes but is a year removed from the major leagues. However, Puig could probably jump into the Dodgers lineup now and be the best with Either and Kemp out. All in all this is not an overpay, obviously the Major League Teams see something we don’t see in Puig.

Soler can only make more than Puig if he produces AND Puig doesn’t. If both produce they’ll both opt to go to arbitration. The scenario you described only works out if Soler produces and Puig doesn’t really. Even then Puig would likley make moe total money over the span of the contract, but it also means he didn’t opt to go to arb and was thus likely overpaid by quite a bit.

this is basically because he is the last foreign player you can get bypassing the draft. It also allows them to trade a guy like sands more easily since there is now a outfielder to replace him, a thin farm needed something for the upgrades Colletti will inevitable seek.